Reality Czech

Re: What is STUN? RE: "ATM Machines": Why do drive through ATMs have braille dots on the buttons? RE: "NIC Cards": Same thing in the Army, our ID is called a "CAC Card". Any guesses on what the second "C" stands for? RE: "Cable Modems": Modulator/demodulator? Wow, it never even occured to me it was an abbreviation... did any of you know SCUBA is an acronym for Self Contained Underwater Breating Apparatus? RE: "I could care less": I say this... but I follow up with "But not without pharmaceutical assistance."

Re: Addictions! I'm censoring myself for the next 3 posts that come into my head regarding this thread... if I come up with a fourth I'll consider posting. Maybe something PG-13 or below will occur to me.

Re: Looking for input or an example on a character build idea I have two main reasons for not having it right this moment: 1) I'm on a government computer in a semi-secure building and am therefore behind a couple of firewalls and under restriction as to which sofware I can install on my terminal anyway (read: no installation of anything, ever.) 2) See: 1)

Re: ...spanking... IMO, This is basically a matter of taste again; if the extra time taken to do it this new way is unacceptable... do it the old way. If you think the extra time is worth the extra realism you're attempting to attain, then go for it, the only valid questions then become: 1) Does your system work as intended? 2) Are you doing it as simply and elegantly as possible? If you and the players are willing to spend the extra time (like some are when applying hit locations and whatnot) then go ahead.

Re: Looking for input or an example on a character build idea Thanks for the suggestions guys, I'm looking forward to getting my hero designer software so I can stopp doing this with the "stubby pencil and paper with coffee rings on it" method.

Re: ...spanking... Whoops, you got me there. I read it backward (hey, at least I read it.)

Re: Universal Analyst

Re: Looking for input or an example on a character build idea Thanks for the suggestions. I think I'm gravitating toward the "brain piloting a robot body vehicle" idea, but that's because the image I'm basing the whole question on is a big, heavily armored combat chassis with guns, etc. It'd be nice to have that chassis be a vehicle that the brain could "exit" under the right circumstances (i.e. at home base) and "slip into something a little more comfortable". Less wear and tear on the carpets if you don't ALWAYS weigh 17 tons.

Re: Universal Analyst I've often wished for real-time access to the internet in my head to allow for a greater depth of understanding and knowledge through the HUGE pool of reference material this would provide... But then I think about popup ads while driving and think better of it. Really neat concept... have you perchance read Frank Herbert's Dune? The observation of minutiae and indictive reasoning training the Bene Gesserit (sp?) is along these lines.

Re: ...spanking...

Re: ...spanking... Overall I like the tuneable aspect of this damage model, but I have an issue with a character taking less STUN than Body damage. To me it's counterintuitive (Maybe just because of how I imagine STUN and how I've described it) A physical injury is usually associated with a comparitively large debilitating effect due to pain, shock, and the negative impact on concentration and decision-making abilities upon trauma. Apart from that (and maybe it's just this one example that puts the overall idea in a bad light for me) I think it's attractive for the stab at greater realism and flexibility in describing the effects of varying attacks.

Re: What is STUN? Ahh, I was still thinking in terms of a "house rules" solution and assumed that's what you were proposing.

Re: What is STUN?

Re: Unofficial Welcome Mat (For New Members) Thanks for the welcome

Re: What is STUN? This is a matter of personal taste, I would probably choose to leave it out of most of my games unless the players dememded it. I will say however in a lot of fights where two people are attempting to kill/incapacitate each other in real life, the first to strike a wounding blow is generally the winner. So the "vicious circle of losing" is pretty realistic. You can go either way... I for one don't particularly care for wound levels either.

Re: Ogre NND Question Agreed. Yup, to me the best thing to do with any power/effect is to write it as completely, concisely, and fairly as possible with the intent of preventing the constant need for judgement calls. We all know you'll never preclude all questions, but the better you write the power the less time and effort you waste during play adjudicating effects.

Re: What is STUN? I think you could model this, but just because you only have half your STUN left wouldn't require it (unless that's how you want your game to work) If you did want to simulate a degraded state prior to unconciousness, you could simply create a house rule that OCV/DCV, etc. are scaled down as you hit predetermined points on your "STUN bar" This example has no game balance or thought put into it, I'm just using it to show how one could model it and to indicate that it'd (in my mind) simply be a house rule, not a shortcoming of the game as written that it's not in the rules already.

I know this is far from original, but what powers and SFX would you guys use to simulate a human brain inside a robotic body? I'm sure there's a character writeup or fifty that already answers this, I'd just like a starting point to get a concept off the ground. The big thing I'm looking at is the automaton power "Takes no STUN" with a limitation like "There's a brain in there somewhere, so sometimes he will take STUN if the appropriate power or effect were applied" (-1/2)

Re: What is STUN? You may, if I can be allowed to state for the record that I like pie.

Re: Does having 16-20 BODY in a Char. Max. game break things? If it causes problems in your games, then maybe you need to come up with a house rule/comprimise/agreement with your players to address it. If you don't like the way things are running, then yes, there's a problem. Off the top of my head you could put a cap on maximum allowable BOD scores for players, (my first HERO GM did this) and I'm sure the HERO gurus here could suggest many other solutions to the issue if you asked. To me, the question is not whether other message board members have a problem with it, but whether you do. If you're dissatisfied with how things are going, develop a plan and implement it for your games.

Re: Universal Analyst Heck, to me the hard part could be the character knows so much more than the player. Half the knowledge issues I run into aren't questions I don't know the answer to, it's the questions I was too uninformed to develop in the first place.

Re: What is STUN? I agree that you either are concious or you aren't, but you can still express STUN as a scale, since "1 STUN above unconcious" is closer to unconcious than "150 STUN above unconcious". Saying it's a binary state is like saying the hours in the day are a meaningless measurement because it's either night or day, and never both at the same time. (Please don't bring up twilight, this is only an analogy. These aren't the droids you're looking for. ) Just because it's daytime, it's not a meaningless measure to say "It will be nighttime in four and a half hours."

Re: What is STUN? All good examples; I see STUN as a close mechanical approximation of a variety of "real life" effects. From what you're saying here you do as well. Yes, SFX can vary from one recipient of STUN damage to another. The reason I used shock as an example of STUN damage here is because shock is a temporary, debilitating condition that can lead to death if untreated. Shock can be caused my trauma, rapid change in environment, psychological stress, or any combination of these. Getting shot causes shock, but you can succumb to shock without having been shot. In other words- You will experience shock if you are injured. You will experience shock if the environmental and conditional norms around you change too dramatically or unexpectedly. You will experience shock if you percieve either of the above to have happened to you You will experience shock if psyhological stress or sensory overload overwhelm you when you are trying to perform at your normal capacity. To me, this sounds almost exactly like STUN as reflected in the game mechanics. The SFX can vary, but assuming the recipient of STUN is a living thing, it's subject to shock. In your robot example, one must begin the more liberal application of "handwavium", since robots in combat isn't exactly an everyday occurance, so we have to estimate the effects of "nonlethal" combat effects directed against robots. Yup. To me this makes sense as well. Combined unnatural stimulii are more debilitating than they would be individually... I'm sure in real life the effect is cumulative only in the vaguest sense, but most of the time we're still going to palatably reflect "reallity" Whether the 3 sources of STUN are 3 club blows or club/dart/EGO attack. I'm not really comfortable saying "Maybe he's not unconcious"... If I wanted to create a power that simulated "incapacitating cloud of gas" I could do it, and I wouldn't want to be limited by the idea that if my victim had STUN left he'd be capable of action. Inversely, I expect a negative STUN score to reflect a loss of conciousness in all cases, since that's the intended effect of any attack or effect that reduces a targets' STUN to less than zero. Maybe this is just another SFX arguement, but if you want to say the guy is swatting bugs to the exclusion of all other actions whether he likes it or not, I'd prefer to see the power written to reflect that intent rather than handwave it. Except as stated above, I can agree with this whole statement. The one caveat is to me STUN should reflect a scale of the threat of unconciousness and not "any state that renders one incapable of action" I agree. Lethal combat also results in STUN, but that IMO this is consistent with the body's natural response to attacks that could be said to cause Body damage.

Re: Universal Analyst I'm just curious, but what is the justification you're using to explain how observant, intuitive, and knowledgeable this fellow is? I think it's a really interesting power concept (But then again I work as an analyst for the government and love it, which in my experience differentiates me from 90-95% of all people who try my job) I'm not saying "There's no way he could analyze all of that"... I can think of at least 3 ways right now. I'm just asking how you see him doing it

Re: What is STUN? I think in most games this is simulated by players staying up for unwise periods of time the night prior to a play session refining existing characters, arguing rules in message boards, and worrying about the homework/errands/job responsibilities/angry wife they have disregarded as a result. There may be no actual game mechanic for simulating a barely conscious state, but often a player can compensate for this with adequately poor planning in non-game related tasks.